2017 Midwest Region Meeting

Sharpen Your Teaching Skills Sessions

Presented on Friday and Saturday at the meeting, sessions in this track will feature presentations by educators from across the country sharing valuable teaching tips that you can put to use immediately in your classes.

Session 1.01 Sharpen Your Teaching Skills 1Student Engagement/Assessment Using Poll EverywherePresenter: Elizabeth A. Murphy, DePaul UniversityThe electronic system called Poll Everywhere solves all of these problems and creates an active, fun learning environment where all students participate, not just the students who are “called upon” during class. There are also multiple types of questions that can be asked, not just multiple-choice questions, and including open-ended questions. The levels of questions asked can vary from recall to computational to analytical, thereby helping to improve the critical thinking skills of students and giving both students and faculty timely feedback on what students have learned. Therefore, this tool can be used for any type of accounting class, including those that address big data and analytical experiences.Shaping the Learning Experience Utilizing Technology in a Changing Education LandscapePresenters: Markus Ahrens, St. Louis Community College-Meramec, Cathy J. Scott, Navarro CollegeAre you having difficulty keeping up with the how quickly technology is changing? Do you feel that you already have too many topics to cover in your accounting course? This interactive session will examine where you and/or your campus are on the technology curve. Resources will be introduced which can help to successfully integrate technology into your classroom environment. Participants will be provided the opportunity to determine which technology resources can best facilitate meaningful learning in their courses, as well as fit with their teaching style.

Session 2.01 Get Ready for Your CoursesPresenters: Natalie Churyk, Northern Illinois University, Abbie L. Daly, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Matthew Stern, DePaul UniversityThis interactive panel session will provide insights on how to prepare for classes, how to balance teaching, research and service, different ways to deliver the contents or how to engage students, and publish your teaching initiatives or cases.

Session 3.01 Alpine Cupcakes, Inc. An Audit Case StudyPresenter: Mary P. Mindak, DePaul UniversityThis case study is a resource to use in the development of students’ comprehension of critical auditing concepts. The casebook is suitable for both graduate and undergraduate students and can be used as a supplement to any auditing textbook. Students act as employees of Garcia and Foster, CPAs and conduct an internal inspection of the firm’s audit of Alpine Cupcakes, Inc. The case assignments require students to review completed audit workpapers rather than create workpapers from scratch. This allows students to find errors in completed audit procedures and related documentation. For example, students identify weaknesses in the client’s internal controls that the auditors failed to find, evaluate the auditors’ tests of internal controls and substantive testing procedures, and assess the quality and completeness of the auditors’ workpaper documentation. This casebook provides students an opportunity to see realistic audit workpapers, visualize how audit workpapers are linked to the audit program, and learn how source documents are integrated into audit tasks. Students practice critical thinking skills as they consider the purpose of audit procedures and the issues that arise when trying to implement those procedures in a realistic setting. The casebook contains three modules including risk assessment, cash, and accounts receivable.

Session 4.01 An Original Dataset and Exercises in Audit Analytics: Creating a Course Using CaseWare IDEAPresenters: Cindy Durtschi, DePaul University, Tawei (David) Wang, DePaul UniversityIn this workshop, you will be introduced to CaseWare IDEA and use our original dataset to work through a series of exercises where you will: · • Import an Excel file into IDEA • Check record count, control total, basic descriptive information • Extract data, such as data within a specific time period • Summarize data by various criteria (e.g., sales by customer, by territory, etc.) • Search for duplicatesIn the final exercise, you will use the tools you have learned to find a possible fraud within the data.

Sharpen Your Teaching Skills 2First You Have to Remember: Creating a Foundation for Variance AnalyticsPresenter: Barbara W. Scofield, Washburn UniversityVariance analysis is introduced to students after they understand the value of inventory (actual quantity * actual prices) and the role of the flexible budgets in identifying overall revenue or spending variances (standard quantity * standard prices). This session demonstrates a new technique to more easily understand variance analysis. By helping new students easily learn the correct definitions of accounting concepts, the students have a pathway to succeed in more complex managerial accounting thinking.How Great Listening Makes You a Better Teacher and StudentPresenter: Mfon J. Akpan, National Louis University, Cynthia Kivland, Liautaud Institute, University of IllinoisFocusing on the simple yet powerful principles of Stop, Look, and Listen I have become a good listener. Being a good listener has helped me to improve classroom engagement, motivation, and environment. The effect of practicing the habits has been enormous. Listening is an effective way of increasing emotional intelligence; which can pay dividends in the classroom environment.